More relevantly, the wealthy do invest out of their personal income. Since the op-ed was specifically talking about investment choices, this would seem relevant. To be perfectly honest, whether it affects the choice of investing or not is really a secondary issue (yet another red herring in the op-ed IMO). What's directly affected is the amount of money available to invest. It's a good bet that the bulk of that 700B in tax revenue will come directly out of investment.
False.
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To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
varusword75 wrote:
Only selfish petty people envy others for their success.
Envy is a motivator in capitalism, not a problem.
MDenham wrote:
Envy is a motivator in capitalism, not a problem.
His Excellency Aethien wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
If no one debated with me, then I wouldn't post here anymore.
gbaji wrote:
I'm not getting my news from anywhere Joph.
Smasharoo wrote:
More relevantly, the wealthy do invest out of their personal income. Since the op-ed was specifically talking about investment choices, this would seem relevant. To be perfectly honest, whether it affects the choice of investing or not is really a secondary issue (yet another red herring in the op-ed IMO). What's directly affected is the amount of money available to invest. It's a good bet that the bulk of that 700B in tax revenue will come directly out of investment.
False.
False.
What is false? That the wealthy invest out of their personal income? Or that the bulk of that 700B tax revenue will come out of funds which would otherwise be invested in some way?
I'm curious what you think the wealthy are doing with that money that everyone wants to tax from them. They just hide 70B a year collectively under their mattresses?
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
Actually, it might encourage more money to be invested, since invested money isn't taxed until dividends are earned.
Also, the capital gains tax is much lower than income tax
Sweet,
Which is good reason for a multi-millionaire to be neutral, or in favor, of raising the income tax rate.
Quote:
Also, the capital gains tax is much lower than income tax
Which is good reason for a multi-millionaire to be neutral, or in favor, of raising the income tax rate.
varusword75 wrote:
Sweet,
Which is good reason for a multi-millionaire to be neutral, or in favor, of raising the income tax rate.
Quote:
Also, the capital gains tax is much lower than income tax
Which is good reason for a multi-millionaire to be neutral, or in favor, of raising the income tax rate.
varusword75 wrote:
Desire is what motivates me, how about you?
Donate. One day it could be your family.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
gbaji wrote:
Why do you think so? Think it through. If the tax increase isn't going to affect the rich person's day to day life, then where does that extra revenue come from? It's not even a complicated equation:
earnings - taxes = adj_earnings
adj_earnings - expenses = investment (assuming a wealthy person puts everything he doesn't spend plus into some form of investment, even if it's just a savings account).
If we increase taxes, then we decrease adjusted earnings. But if expenses remain constant, then the loss of adjusted earnings has to come out of investment. Now the degree to which you think investment helps other people is subject to debate and discussion, but can we at least agree that job growth is a function of total investment in the market and thus anything which decreases investment as a whole will tend to decrease job growth?
Where do you think jobs come from? The job fairy? Nope. Someone with money (almost all of them in that top 2% of earners btw), decides that he can afford to hire someone to work for him. It's kinda axiomatic that anything you do which decreases the earnings of that 2% will negatively impact jobs. How much is debatable, but it will hurt it. It absolutely wont help job growth, right?
And since job growth is what we need, raising taxes on that group is the worst thing we could do. As I commented earlier, we'd be much much better off raising taxes on the bottom 98% than the top 2% right now. Those taxes are only affecting people with jobs. So if you have a choice between paying less taxes on the job you don't have or more taxes on the job you might have otherwise, which would you choose? Taxing the group of people who create jobs while keeping taxes lower for the people the employ isn't going to help as much as taxing the people they employ and *not* taxing the people who create the jobs.
Did you follow that? I hope that made sense at least.
earnings - taxes = adj_earnings
adj_earnings - expenses = investment (assuming a wealthy person puts everything he doesn't spend plus into some form of investment, even if it's just a savings account).
If we increase taxes, then we decrease adjusted earnings. But if expenses remain constant, then the loss of adjusted earnings has to come out of investment. Now the degree to which you think investment helps other people is subject to debate and discussion, but can we at least agree that job growth is a function of total investment in the market and thus anything which decreases investment as a whole will tend to decrease job growth?
Where do you think jobs come from? The job fairy? Nope. Someone with money (almost all of them in that top 2% of earners btw), decides that he can afford to hire someone to work for him. It's kinda axiomatic that anything you do which decreases the earnings of that 2% will negatively impact jobs. How much is debatable, but it will hurt it. It absolutely wont help job growth, right?
And since job growth is what we need, raising taxes on that group is the worst thing we could do. As I commented earlier, we'd be much much better off raising taxes on the bottom 98% than the top 2% right now. Those taxes are only affecting people with jobs. So if you have a choice between paying less taxes on the job you don't have or more taxes on the job you might have otherwise, which would you choose? Taxing the group of people who create jobs while keeping taxes lower for the people the employ isn't going to help as much as taxing the people they employ and *not* taxing the people who create the jobs.
Did you follow that? I hope that made sense at least.
Of course it makes sense. I'm not an idiot, and I work at an extremely small company, and we handle finances for other small companies (in the music business).
It's still a load of crap.
Gbaji, you're assuming that these multi-millionaire venture capital investors are directly responsible for the hiring and firing of people who work for them. They're not. They're not sole proprietors at that level - they've at the very least become an S Corp. And the argument that was made in the OP is that his personal income tax rate pretty much has no bearing on what decisions he makes with his business income. When your personal net worth is more than a few million dollars, you separate out your business income simply because it's an accounting nightmare otherwise.
Edited, Oct 1st 2010 1:52pm by catwho
Edited, Oct 1st 2010 1:52pm by catwho
Sweetums wrote:
varusword75 wrote:
Sweet,
Which is good reason for a multi-millionaire to be neutral, or in favor, of raising the income tax rate.
Quote:
Also, the capital gains tax is much lower than income tax
Which is good reason for a multi-millionaire to be neutral, or in favor, of raising the income tax rate.
I was arguing several points. One of them was that he was being dishonest talking about the impact of income taxes on his investment choices, since baring same day activities, most of his investment choices are going to involve capital gains tax rates.
Of course, it's misleading for a couple of reasons since capital gains rates are changing as well. It's a bait and switch. He's keeping the context to income taxes, even though it's more than just income taxes at stake. But by talking about income taxes instead of capital gains taxes, he can honestly say that those rates don't affect his investment decisions. Which is why it's total BS.
It's like arguing that it's ok to raise the price of ice cream since the price of ice cream never affected your decisions when deciding whether to get your car washed. Actually, it's less relevant than that.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
varusword75 wrote:
Mdenham,
It can be for some. It's not as if envy has to be a constant characteristic for everyone who believes in capitalism. In fact most of us realize money is just the tool that allows us to achieve whatever we may desire.
Desire is what motivates me, how about you?
Quote:
Envy is a motivator in capitalism, not a problem
It can be for some. It's not as if envy has to be a constant characteristic for everyone who believes in capitalism. In fact most of us realize money is just the tool that allows us to achieve whatever we may desire.
Desire is what motivates me, how about you?
catwho wrote:
Gbaji, you're assuming that these multi-millionaire venture capital investors are directly responsible for the hiring and firing of people who work for them. They're not. They're not sole proprietors at that level - they've at the very least become an S Corp. And the argument that was made in the OP is that his personal income tax rate pretty much has no bearing on what decisions he makes with his business income. When your personal net worth is more than a few million dollars, you separate out your business income simply because it's an accounting nightmare otherwise.
But his personal income is overwhelmingly invested somewhere. He doesn't just hide the money in a mattress. The loss of 700B in the market means 700B less money available to use to as loans, expansions, new startups, etc. All of which contribute to economic growth and job creation.
You guys are focusing only on the direct impact to the individual or business who earns that money, but not seeing that what they do with the money they earn also has an impact. Right now, we need wealthy people to put their money into business ventures of all kinds in order to stimulate economic growth. Every extra dollar we tax from them is one less dollar they have available to do what we want and need them to do.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
That's a nice blank assumption that they will invest every dime of that in the market Gbaji, but complete nonsense. They're just as likely to spend it on hookers and blow, or an expensive foreign car, or a Brazilian mistress, or whatever. Show me real evidence that they will invest every dime of that money in things that will improve America, and that argument will have some weight. Otherwise, shove it.
Technogeek wrote:
That's a nice blank assumption that they will invest every dime of that in the market Gbaji, but complete nonsense. They're just as likely to spend it on hookers and blow, or an expensive foreign car, or a Brazilian mistress, or whatever. Show me real evidence that they will invest every dime of that money in things that will improve America, and that argument will have some weight. Otherwise, shove it.
You're looking at it backwards. Nearly every single domestic dollar currently invested in things that will improve America comes from that top 2%. What the ratio of money earned spent on hookers and blow and expensive cars is compared to that invested is somewhat irrelevant. The money invested does come out of their incomes.
Let's put it another way: Assume that last year, super rich guy earned $50M in earnings. Out of that 50M, 20M was spent in taxes. Of the remaining 30M, he spent 15M on parties, cars, his mansion, and his Brazilian mistress, and the remaining 15M he handed to his investment account manager to put into his portfolio. This year, his taxes go up, so out of the same 50M in earnings, he has to pay 30M in taxes. So what are the options you think are likely that he'll do with the remaining 20M:
1. He'll spend the same 15M on living expenses and invest the remaining 5M.
2. He'll cut his living expenses to 5M, and keep putting 15M into investment.
3. He'll split the difference and drop living expenses to 10M, and investment to 10M.
4. Other (explain what he'd do).
I think we all know that choice number 1 is the most likely result, with choice 3 a possibility. Choice 2 is almost certainly not going to happen though. The point being that everything else staying the same, increasing his taxes will decrease his investment. That is the first thing that will be cut out of his financial planning.
Certainly, there's no logic at all which could justify suggesting that he's going to *increase* investment if his taxes are increased, right?
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
How do tax laws work for money that is invested out there? Does investing your money have any impact on how much you are taxed?
01001001 00100000 01001100 01001001 01001011 01000101 00100000 01000011 01000001 01001011 01000101
You'll always be stupid, you'll just be stupid with more information in your brain
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You'll always be stupid, you'll just be stupid with more information in your brain
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gbaji wrote:
But his personal income is overwhelmingly invested somewhere. He doesn't just hide the money in a mattress. The loss of 700B in the market means 700B less money available to use to as loans, expansions, new startups, etc. All of which contribute to economic growth and job creation.
That's what you said moron. That statement implied that the entire amount of 700B would be reinvested. Dance all you want, you are still clueless.
Technogeek wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But his personal income is overwhelmingly invested somewhere. He doesn't just hide the money in a mattress. The loss of 700B in the market means 700B less money available to use to as loans, expansions, new startups, etc. All of which contribute to economic growth and job creation.
That's what you said moron. That statement implied that the entire amount of 700B would be reinvested. Dance all you want, you are still clueless.
Yes. See my post above for why that's true.
What I find so amusing about this is that the very people who assume that the rich are greedy bastards who would much rather spend their money on expensive cars and women than invest that money somehow magically assume the exact opposite behavior when the issue of paying higher taxes comes up. If you believe that, then you have to assume that they're going to cut the amount they spend on investment before they cut their personal living expenses. Which means that the bulk of any tax increase on "the rich" will come directly out of investment.
You all know this, you just refuse to admit it because it's inconvenient for the position you've chosen to take.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
You're looking at it backwards. Nearly every single domestic dollar currently invested in things that will improve America comes from that top 2%. What the ratio of money earned spent on hookers and blow and expensive cars is compared to that invested is somewhat irrelevant. The money invested does come out of their incomes.
Probably not. Most high wage earners aren't fully invested. I'm certainly not. Liquidity is useful and easy when you earn enough not to worry about day to day or year to year expenses. People like you, on the other hand, the marginalized "middle class" who have more debt than assets, are fully invested. You should get a tax cut. I'm just going to write a smaller check next April (edit: before the "aha!" bit, I actually file quarterly, but it's a worse metaphor) and not really notice the extra $20k or whatever the difference turns out to be. I'm certainly not going to rub my hands together gleefully and by 100 shares of Apple or hire an assistant or whatever bizarre fantasy it is you think happens when people with more than enough money are given an incredibly insignificant (to them) increase in their net worth.
Edited, Oct 1st 2010 8:17pm by Smasharoo
Disclaimer:
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
gbaji wrote:
Let's put it another way: Assume that last year, super rich guy earned $50M in earnings. Out of that 50M, 20M was spent in taxes. Of the remaining 30M, he spent 15M on parties, cars, his mansion, and his Brazilian mistress, and the remaining 15M he handed to his investment account manager to put into his portfolio. This year, his taxes go up, so out of the same 50M in earnings, he has to pay 30M in taxes. So what are the options you think are likely that he'll do with the remaining 20M:
1. He'll spend the same 15M on living expenses and invest the remaining 5M.
2. He'll cut his living expenses to 5M, and keep putting 15M into investment.
3. He'll split the difference and drop living expenses to 10M, and investment to 10M.
4. Other (explain what he'd do).
I think we all know that choice number 1 is the most likely result, with choice 3 a possibility. Choice 2 is almost certainly not going to happen though. The point being that everything else staying the same, increasing his taxes will decrease his investment. That is the first thing that will be cut out of his financial planning.
Certainly, there's no logic at all which could justify suggesting that he's going to *increase* investment if his taxes are increased, right?
1. He'll spend the same 15M on living expenses and invest the remaining 5M.
2. He'll cut his living expenses to 5M, and keep putting 15M into investment.
3. He'll split the difference and drop living expenses to 10M, and investment to 10M.
4. Other (explain what he'd do).
I think we all know that choice number 1 is the most likely result, with choice 3 a possibility. Choice 2 is almost certainly not going to happen though. The point being that everything else staying the same, increasing his taxes will decrease his investment. That is the first thing that will be cut out of his financial planning.
Certainly, there's no logic at all which could justify suggesting that he's going to *increase* investment if his taxes are increased, right?
And I can think of one incredibly obvious situation where investment would be increased if personal tax rates were: a simultaneous drop in capital gains taxes of similar or larger magnitude. Which, all things considered, would probably be the best way to handle this - the government gets the same amount of incoming revenue (roughly), and more money gets funneled into investments.
Smasharoo wrote:
You're looking at it backwards. Nearly every single domestic dollar currently invested in things that will improve America comes from that top 2%. What the ratio of money earned spent on hookers and blow and expensive cars is compared to that invested is somewhat irrelevant. The money invested does come out of their incomes.
Probably not. Most high wage earners aren't fully invested.
Wow! Way to fail to read there Smash. I'm not talking about what percentage of your wealth or earnings is invested. I even said that in the bit you just quoted.
100% of the money that they do invest comes out of earnings previously made. How much that is relative to the total is irrelevant. If you invest 80% of your earnings, or 5% of your earnings, it's still correct to say that 100% of your investment came from your earnings. Ergo, anything which affects your earnings, will affect your investment.
Quote:
I'm certainly not. Liquidity is useful and easy when you earn enough not to worry about day to day or year to year expenses.
And where do you keep your liquid assets Smash? In a bank, right? And what does the bank do with that money while you're not using it? Oh yeah! They use it to make home loans, and car loans, and business loans, and manage day to day business, pay interest, etc...
I even mentioned earlier that even if all they do is put it into a savings account, it's still "invested" in that it helps others. Barring you literally taking your money out and hiding it under your mattress, or converting it into a commodity and putting it in a safe, your money is being used in some way which generates positive economic outcomes. That's why they pay you interest on your accounts (as silly and useless as that is, but that's beside the point).
Quote:
People like you, on the other hand, the marginalized "middle class" who have more debt than assets, are fully invested.
Ah! You wound me! Oh wait. I have less debt than assets too! Of course, I had less debt than assets when I worked part time and lived in my car as well, so I guess that's an absurd measurement to make isn't it?
Quote:
You should get a tax cut. I'm just going to write a smaller check next April (edit: before the "aha!" bit, I actually file quarterly, but it's a worse metaphor) and not really notice the extra $20k or whatever the difference turns out to be. I'm certainly not going to rub my hands together gleefully and by 100 shares of Apple or hire an assistant or whatever bizarre fantasy it is you think happens when people with more than enough money are given an incredibly insignificant (to them) increase in their net worth.
Uh huh... So you never make decisions about how much money to invest based on how much money you have available. I find that not only hard to believe, but somewhat impossible to accept. While you might not notice that extra 20k on that particular day, when you go puttering around in your accounts and notice that you've got X dollars sitting in an account earning minimal interest and think "Self. I'm gonna take some of this and put it into that stock that my golfing buddy told me about last week", it's a good bet that how much you transfer is going to be based on how much is there. At that moment you also wont be thinking about where each section of that money came from. But you'll absolutely be looking at the actual balance.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
MDenham wrote:
Choice #4 is actually the most likely one, followed by 3 and then 1. (2 is highly unlikely but possible.) Specifically, he's most likely to cut his investment amount, but not by anything like the full $10M he's losing to additional taxes (and splitting it evenly isn't terribly likely, unless the guy's a complete bonehead about constantly replacing new things with newer things, like most pro sports players are). I'd figure on, as a more likely split, around 12-13M in investment and 7-8M in living expenses.
Why? We are assuming that 15M is his normal yearly expenditure on his standard of living. What that includes could be anything, but let's pretend that every single year for the last 10 years, he's made 50M, paid 20M in taxes, and spent 15M on his living expenses and invested the remaining 15M. Why would you assume that he'd cut the living expenses at all?
By far the most likely result is choice 1. He's going to keep living as he has. Why change? He's still increasing his net worth by 5 million dollars a year, right? He's not going to re-assess that until the taxes rise to a point where he can't actually afford that cost of living anymore. Then, and only then, will he reduce his expenses.
Quote:
And I can think of one incredibly obvious situation where investment would be increased if personal tax rates were: a simultaneous drop in capital gains taxes of similar or larger magnitude. Which, all things considered, would probably be the best way to handle this - the government gets the same amount of incoming revenue (roughly), and more money gets funneled into investments.
But investment wouldn't be increased because personal tax rates were increased. They would increase because capital gains taxes decreased. And you'd get even more investment if capital gains taxes were decreased *and* personal income taxes were decreased. Cause then he'd have more money to invest and more reason to invest it.
Your statement could technically be correct if you used the phrase "even if personal tax rates were increased", but that's not a reason to increase personal tax rates, is it? It's a great reason to support cutting capital gains taxes. Is there where I point out that part of the "Bush tax cuts" which the Dems want to allow to expire include the current low capital gains tax rate?
So what the Dems are proposing is raising the capital gains tax rate. Which will absolutely hurt investment. And they want to raise the income tax rates on the top 2%, which will reduce the amount of money they have to invest. In other words, the exact opposite two actions one would take if one wanted to increase the amount of investment being made and exactly what you would do if you wanted to reduce the amount of investment being made. Assuming we agree that for this economy to recover and for jobs to return we need healthy investment in all sectors, then one could conclude that the Democrats are either complete morons and incompetents, or that they actually want the economy to continue to languish.
I can't say which is true, but what they propose is clearly the exact opposite from what we should be doing right now. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
100% of the money that they do invest comes out of earnings previously made. How much that is relative to the total is irrelevant. If you invest 80% of your earnings, or 5% of your earnings, it's still correct to say that 100% of your investment came from your earnings. Ergo, anything which affects your earnings, will affect your investment.
Oh, sorry, I hadn't read the rest of the thread. I didn't realize you were in the "I was wrong, so I'll desperately pretend that I was arguing nothing and just inexplicably explaining the definitions of simple words in great verbosity and obfuscation".
Your point was that money people earn is referred to as "earnings"? Awesome, thanks for clearing that up for us. Let me know if you're going to take an actual position.
Disclaimer:
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.
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